I just can't justify it based on it's chopping. From what I've heard from different people, it only has the autochop and basically the equivalent of the mark button on my 303. I was hoping to at least be able to bring up a waveform and chop that like an MPC. Ideally I would also like to be able to chop it into even pieces, but that might be a reach. Does anybody know any workarounds, or maybe can at least sell the chopping features on this to me a little?

You can cut your own chops on the machine, but it is a bit tedious. You would have to copy the waveform to each pad (or 1 for as many chops as you want) and manually set the start and end points of each pad. It may take a while longer, but each piece would be exactly as you want.

The autochop usually works well, and if you edit the resulting slices you can have a massive level of precision (you do get waveforms to work with).

I call this the 'semi-auto' approach

It won't cut into even pieces like an MPC. Unless you're slicing a very rigid loop that approach never works properly anyway (imo) as it doesn't allow for swing

Theoretically you could split into even pieces, but you'd have to calculate at what points you need to cut then and do it manually one sample at a time.

Lately I only use manual chopping on the SP-606, if you get the hang of that editing samples is way easy and pretty fast. It is a bit tedious perhaps, but it's the best way of chopping in my opinion. The autochop isn't all bad, but at times it's difficult to get useful results.

Manually chopping has the advantage that you choose the cuts yourself. What I mean is you can copy one sample to multiple pads and then go from there and edit those samples to what you want.

Basically the SP-606 is pretty fast actually when it comes to this process, it hardly matters for the creative process and the waveforms are great and accurate enough.

Yeah, I have a 303 so I'm used to having to copy it to all the pads and cut it down. But what about polyphony? That seems to be the main thing bothering people in reviews about them. Is there a way around that?

Not really a work around for that, on the other hand... I haven't really run into the limits with my SP-606 a lot.

Most of the old school stuff doesn't ever need more than 4 voices. If you do a lot in mono you won't run into problems very fast, but even in stereo I haven't run into problems that often.

Also if you do for example intend to use up to 4 stereo parts at the same time, better make sure one stereo part isn't just a snare in stereo, but more of a loop with more instruments in it. That's probably the 'work around' you'd be looking for.

All in all I think it depends a lot on what you intend to do with the SP-606, but 8 voices turned out to be more than enough for the kind of beats I made.

The SP-404 has only 12 voices and I don't ever hear people complain about that, I think it's more that in comparison to the MPC series which have a lot more polyphony and because a lot of people look at the SP-606 as a direct MPC1000 competitor they think 8 voices is way not enough.

In reality even though 32 voices on the MPC1000 is nice, it's not necessary.

If you do want more polyphony and really don't feel comfortable about having only 8, I would suggest looking into the MPC1K or perhaps a Korg EMX-1. Still, they all have their advantages and disadvantages.

Yeah the auto chop isnt to reliable, but it works best with drums because there is a little air in between the sounds. It is really easy to manually chop samples though, using the clip board.

I've said it before somewhere, but it's relevant to this thread: if you can't get a loop to chop cleanly, put it through an expander first to emphasise the transients. The autochop is only meant for drumloops, and if that loop is compressed (like taken from a bloody mp3) there aint much in the way of transients to work with. Drumloops taken from vinyl won't be as compressed usually, so will work well.

I've maxed the poly a couple of times... it's not really an issue (if those kinds of things worry you, stay away from SP samplers ), and you can actually get creative results from maxing the poly

Autochop is tight as hell.. If you want to chop more all you have to do is adjust the chop that is it.. You don't have to resample to a pad then adjust.. I have never done that.. here's a quick break down...

When you chop it will go to the assign pads. That are lit up. well from there you just hit the pad that you want with the current chop on it.. Then look at the wave form and adjust using either the data/jog wheel or the arrows dec/inc.. And the cool thing is you can also use the time cut frames, 512,256,128,64,32,16,8,4,1.... Now you can choose to obtain more or less of the autochop sample.. Nothing tedious about it.. quick and simple...

Peace

That's the 'semi-auto' chop I was talking about. Thanks for wxplaining ot so clearly Twitch

It depends on what you are chopping. If there is space between the sounds it works fine. Some phrases with constant sounds it gets confused. I have noticed too that it will cut the end tail off of some samples (making drum hits sound kind of short ) or takes the air out after the sound.

I have a 505 and I think that autochop is pretty accurate.I'm planning in getting a 606 when I get a bit of dough and honestly,8 voices,I'm cool with that
Most electronic music like hiphop,d'n'b,techno,house are meant to be minimal anyways.
I'm not saying that I wouldn't want an MPC 1k but the workflow of the sp's are second to none!!

the 606 seems really dope,and i'm trying to decide if it should be the next machine i get-but i'd be kinda worried about the polyphony myself-still it has a 4 track on it right..so if you ran out of polyphony you couldnt just put the other sounds on another track?

That's a good question, I'm wondering that too. I think I'm gonna get one though, the built in sound card and software seems too good to pass up, especially when I'm short on cash and want an SP-303 upgrade.

Oh, and will I finally be able to trigger a sample to cut off another sample?